When I broke up with my ex about a month ago, I was determined to rebound as quickly as possible. No wallowing this time; it was over and I was moving on.

It was almost too convenient that I was presented with an immediate distraction. Jack was someone I’d known for years; we were never super close, but he’s part of a circle of friends I’ve known since high school. I’d lusted after him for years, too. About four years ago, I even asked my boyfriend at the time permission to make out with Jack, just to “get it out of my system.” My boyfriend said “no,” alas, and so the pining continued. The timing had just never been right.

Until now.

I was single and Jack had broken up with his girlfriend a few months back. We flirted online for a few days before we met up while out with mutual friends on a Friday night. We made out in the bar like drunk 20-year-olds who’d been fantasizing about making out with each other for years.

He contacted me again two days later. We went to his place, watched TV and drank beers before going to bed. We got along, respected one another, and had pretty amazing chemistry but agreed that we were looking for different things in a relationship and wouldn’t be compatible in that way. So we decided to be “fuck buddies.”

“It’s the ideal situation,” Jack said over dinner the next Friday night. “You’re my buddy and I like fucking you.”

It felt refreshing and exciting to be able to talk in such a straightforward and honest way with someone on a “date” – precisely because it wasn’t a date. It was just two friends who were into each other, trying to figure out a way to hook up without anyone getting hurt or ruining the friendship.

I told him I’d never really been in an intentional “fuck buddy” relationship before. I’d had casual sex, of course, but that was when I was much younger. And certainly I didn’t have frank conversations with those guys about our wants, needs, and desires; nor were we “friends” in any real sense of the word. In the last six or seven years, I’d hooked up with people I was either already in a committed, monogamous relationship with or dating with the hope or intention of it leading to something like that.

I had no idea how I’d feel about this prearranged “casual sex” as we went along, though when I’d initially agreed to it I had felt fine — excited even — about the prospect. This seemed like the perfect way to recover from my breakup, a distraction that was satisfying in a number of ways. Since I had no way of predicting how I’d feel about the situation in the future, I promised to keep Jack informed if my feelings changed. “I’ll let you know if it starts to fuck with my head,” I told him.

And what do you know, it did.

A few weeks in, I started to wonder if maybe I just wasn’t cut out for casual sex, at least not with someone I actually liked. Though I’d promised to be honest about my feelings, I didn’t trust them and wasn’t sure how to express their complexity. We’d made an agreement, if I was no longer okay with that agreement, it was my responsibility to cut things off – I knew that much. I also knew that I was having a lot of fun and honestly didn’t want to tank the whole endeavor just because I’d started to feel confused.

People like to say that men can have casual sex more easily than women, that women can’t have sex without getting emotionally involved, whereas men can. They say men can separate their emotions from their dicks. I don’t believe any of this to be true in a biological sense, though I think our socialization does impact our sex lives. And I have female friends who have casual sex easily, often, and without getting emotionally involved or otherwise attached. I want very much to be one of those women.

Instead I felt like a cliché. Maybe I just wasn’t cut out to have a fuck buddy. The reality seemed to be that I have no idea how to navigate a “relationship” that isn’t a relationship. Is it possible to genuinely like and respect and feel attracted to a person, yet keep it “casual?” Is it possible to go on what would otherwise be perceived as “dates” with a person but not date them?

I’ve seen other people do it but frankly, I’m lost. And it’s starting to fuck with my head.

Related

um… your fb can’t ever be somebody that you actually been crushing on. that’s a set up. you can’t have feelings for your fb. that’s rule #1. otherwise you’re just another chick tryna make a man love you for your vajayjay. it don’t work. ever. fb = cute enough to wanna see naked, lame enough to want him to leave afterwards. being able to hold a conversation is optional.

Eduardo

“People like to say that men can have casual sex more easily than women,
that women can’t have sex without getting emotionally involved, whereas
men can. They say men can separate their emotions from their dicks. I
don’t believe any of this to be true in a biological sense, though I
think our socialization does impact our sex lives.”

Don’t discard biology just yet, because I’ve heard that oxytocin affects women differently than men (something about how it combines with estrogen). It’s a shame that feminists generally choose to have Ph.Ds in Literature, English, Gender Studies (with a few remedial courses in human sexuality), Philosophy etc. instead of Biology and Sexology. I believe there are studies about oxytocin and bonding, and perhaps we could dig a little deeper. As with any study about human behavior there are statistical outliers, but I’m willing to bet that the gender differences regarding sexual behavior are clear. Like I said, this sounds interesting and we could research a bit.

1989

I realized I can’t do casual sex, strangely, after having a great FB. He was a friend that I loved messing around with but I never cared about him and other girls. He was like community property (I know, I know….we were young). I knew I would never be able to say that about another casual sex relationship, ever, so I know it’s not for me. Honestly, I don’t think many women can do it without some feelings involved.

Jay

I understand your point and I don’t think I could do it either, but I don’t like to slap a huge label on women and sexuality. Men already feel comfortable doing that shit–which drives me fucking crazy. I think that there are many women who can do it and many who can’t.

Me

i agree. plus i don’t believe there are many people (men or women) who truly can deal with that set up. a lot of the dudes that i know who have done it don’t handle it as well as they like to think they do, but some of them end up torturing themselves with it b/c they refuse to deal with the real issues they’re dealing with. i’ve known good guy friends that fell for the set up or got trapped by their emotions after they start thinking the sex is so good that it must mean more… most people have emotions so it makes sense that most folks can’t just turn it off for the sake of sex, especially since most of the time if you’re attracted to somebody it’s a good chance you wanna see where it could go cuz who don’t wanna keep good sex around permanently assuming y’all got other things in common? some people can, most people can’t, and some people would rather lie about it than to admit that they can’t.

1989

I’m sorry if that came off as more of a generalization than I actually meant. Of course there are women who can and do have no-strings, no-drama sex. But based only off what I’ve seen and heard in my life, I just don’t happen to think that number is particularly large. How men handle casual sex, I can’t speak on because the topic really doesn’t come up with male friends/relatives.

Kema

I think the difference is women don’t generally do people they don’t like. Men do it all the time. If you don’t really like the person it’s easy not to fall.

Krystal Miller

“And I have female friends who have casual sex easily, often, and without
getting emotionally involved or otherwise attached. I want very much to
be one of those women.”

Yes, but notice how many of these same women have severe insecurity issues. Do you think casual sex is a factor? Oftentimes, when women engage in casual sex, they lose their self-respect. They may not say these things to you, but that’s because they are too far down in self-hate that they can’t comprehend otherwise.

Kema

Or they just wanna get off. *shrugs*

Emma Russell

I saw Nadezhda Vyacheslav testimony on how she got that guy to love her as she did him.Though i don’t know her, i believed her cos she said Mutton Osun a spell caster help her seen it happen. I didn’t believe her cos she used a spell i believed her cos she made mention of a mutual spell caster i know of that is mutton Osun. I have also see a lot of testimony about his work on the the internet on blog pages and so on. I literally took a lip of faith to contact him and it turn out that it paid off. In my own case i didn’t ask that him to make anyone fall in love with me or ask that my cheating wife comes back. This time i was at fault i messed up.Will really like to say it was an honest mistake or a few hours or days of weakness but then i will be insulting my wife and the love i feel for her. I was in full control of what i was doing i had the choice not to cheat but i still did. She didn’t find out by herself i told hoping if i told her how sorry i am and how much i still love and want to be with her despite my betray she will forgive completely. It was the biggest mistake of my life maybe i should not have told her, i guess she would have still found out if she didn’t catch me then i bet the other lady would have told her what was going on to destroy what me and my wife had. It was obvious my betray really hurt her i could she it in her eye and i was really sorry. That is why i wasn’t so surprise when she asked that we go our separate ways. There and then i realized that i was following the part that ruined my life and my family. I literally lead four month of my life in misery. I have never felt like i needed her like i had felt begging was not an option nothing was an option cos she was gone. It was right about that time Mutton Osun came into the picture or when i asked that he help me get my wife to love as she did before. I was able to provide the items he asked that i get for the spell and send then down to him. Like Nadezhda Vyacheslav said “the spell does become effective at once that ” she was right also cos just after i did what Mutton Osun asked me to do with what he sent me, it took 7 days before anything happened i even thought for a minute that i had met a fake spell caster but in the end i am happy with my wife again. We going to be renewing our vows on the 20th of September. I was on the edge of become a walking dead a woman with nothing to live for thank my star Mutton Osun helped. I will also leave his contact for those who thing he can help them { [email protected] }